4 key benefits of Microsoft’s Modern Workplace
Microsoft champions the idea of the modern workplace and provides digital tools to enable businesses to support modern ways of working. This has often led to the belief that the modern workplace is about technology, however, it revolves more around employees.
)
The modern workplace is about people and empowering them to do their best work. Technology is the best tool to enable this, but the modern workplace is about mindset, drive, communication, culture, and so much more.
When fully adopted, the modern workplace streamlines business processes, enhances communication, and enables employees to connect, collaborate, and create from anywhere. Below are the four key reasons why organisations should adopt Microsoft’s modern workplace.
Offers a Better Employee Experience for Remote Teams
Microsoft 365 includes new platforms, tools, and apps to nurture employee well-being, connectivity, and learning in the digital workplace. With the launch of Microsoft Viva, the company’s new employee experience platform, Microsoft is betting on the future of remote work and the importance of creating a virtual company culture built around flexible work models.
According to Forbes, “Companies that shift to building around the remote employee experience can create great company cultures that are purpose-built for the future of flexible work".
Companies recognise the need to cultivate a culture better suited to a digital workforce. In the post-COVID era, companies that embrace digital transformation to satisfy those new employee expectations are better suited to thrive going forward.
Viva is designed to do just that. The employee-focused platform helps companies to better connect and support distributed teams by integrating customised tools for employee engagement, learning, and well-being into the daily flow of work within Microsoft Teams. Through Viva, employees can view a continually updating company news feed, attend virtual town halls, and access insights specifically targeted at remote workers, like a guide to planning your remote workday to include regular breaks, informal chat time with colleagues, and wellness opportunities.
Promotes More Effective Collaboration
At its core, Microsoft’s modern workplace is about enhancing employee productivity, enabling seamless collaboration and communication, and streamlining workflows across locations and platforms. The technology that enables all of that is within Microsoft 365. Through the seamless integration of Microsoft 365 apps and services, users can collaborate better together from wherever they work.
Microsoft Teams’ collaboration tools are one of the most compelling reasons to upgrade to Microsoft’s modern workplace. Teams embody Microsoft’s modern workplace by presenting a unified interface that allows users to work seamlessly across Microsoft 365 apps that are integrated on the backend. As Microsoft’s “hub for teamwork,” Teams brings together chat, calls, meetings, file sharing, and third-party tools in one centralised location.
As the needs of remote workers continue to evolve in real-time, Microsoft has continually added new Teams features to address them. From streamlined file sharing to shareable calendars, check out new Teams capabilities you can leverage for greater agility, collaboration and productivity.
Automates Time-Consuming Tasks
Another key benefit is Microsoft Power Platform—a group of products that enable users to develop, build, analyse and automate business processes. They are incredibly helpful in streamlining workflows and boosting efficiency. But you need to be using the modern SharePoint platform to leverage all their available capabilities.
Microsoft’s Power Platform includes Power Automate (a cloud-based service that helps users create automated workflows between their favourite apps and services), Power Apps (a custom app builder), Power BI (a data analysis tool), and Power Virtual Agents (a no-code chatbot builder).
Scalable for Remote Teams
Distributed work is here to stay, and organisations now face the challenge of finding a scalable way to maintain a well-managed and secure digital workplace. By leveraging self-service functionality in Microsoft 365, organisations can empower employees to create the resources and tools they need while avoiding the time-consuming gatekeeping of a fully locked-down system.
Enabling self-service in Microsoft 365 is a concept that encompasses allowing specific self-service features such as group/team creation, external sharing, and guest access. The self-service model has become more relevant given the explosion in Microsoft Teams creation and corresponding administrative challenges. In a modern, hybrid workplace, IT teams can quickly become overwhelmed, and an IT-led provisioning model—where users depend on IT to approve the creation of each new group or team—is virtually impossible to manage at scale.
When IT brings users into the fold via self-service, it creates a win-win strategy for the long term. Employees are able to make the best decision for their own content, and IT gets some relief from having to approve and manage every single user request.
Whether you’re just looking for advice on overcoming your business challenges or have a project in mind, Storm can help.
Next Steps
Contact us to chat about your business requirements or arrange a discovery meeting to scope out your ideas and explore solutions.
)
)
)